Headquarters Building of Tiger Mechanical Heavy Industries, underground level 6, surveillance room.

The room was crammed with dense mechanical devices and surveillance screens, wires on the floor like pythons sprawling crookedly, crawling over the walls and floor.

At the center where the wires converged, a middle-aged man wearing virtual glasses sat on a reclining chair, crossing his legs, watching the surveillance idly.

He was a Hacker, and a seasoned old Hacker at that. His deeply modified brain could almost rival an advanced computer array.

As a large corporation, Tiger Mechanical Heavy Industries certainly had a hacker at headquarters to guard against the extremely common cyber-attacks of this era.

Given the exceedingly high cost of hiring a hacker, one month's salary plus various equipment maintenance fees would cost at least several million Silver Cannon. Therefore, even with Yang Lie's considerable personal wealth, he could only afford one hacker.

But hiring more wouldn't make much sense.

The hacker community is very special, with extreme disparities in individual capabilities, similar to the difference between ordinary people and an Apprentice Death God.

Elite hackers with superior skills and better equipment could easily crush thousands of peers.

The gap in computational power is, after all, exponential.

So, most companies would only hire one hacker.

The hacker's workload is quite heavy, maintaining network gateways, patching vulnerabilities in the regional network, preventing intrusions, and monitoring the situation in the mining area 24/7.

However, for an old hacker, this was no trouble at all.

He only needed to mobilize 40% of his brain's computational power to handle all these tasks.

As for the remaining 60%, of course, it was spent loafing around playing games...

"Huh?"

Suddenly, the old hacker, who was in the midst of a fierce online battle, paused, as if he sensed something, and turned to look at a surveillance screen.

On the screen was the scene of workers and civilians causing a disturbance.

When the confrontation first began, the old hacker had noticed it but didn't bother because such riots were too common in the mines, not worth reporting to the busy Yang Lie. It was enough to send people to suppress it.

The death of peasants and ordinary guards was of no concern as long as the conflict wasn't brought to the Headquarters Building; they could fight as they pleased.

The old hacker had thought nothing of it.

But now, the unstoppable crowd kept breaking through access controls, gunfire warnings couldn't stop them, and the security team was being forced into a continuous retreat, nearing the corporation's core area where the Headquarters Building was situated.

This made the hacker feel quite strange.

"Did these peasants eat something wrong? They usually cowered and didn't dare talk back to a curse, only daring to beg for overdue wages on their knees like beggars..."

"What's happening now? Having the gall to make a fuss like this? Aren't they afraid that Lord Yang might twist their heads off in a fit?"

"Hmm... It seems the security team has suffered casualties as well."

The old hacker's eyes grew deep, and the screen in front of him vividly displayed chaotic fight scenes.

Several guards intended to fire warning shots, but the bullets ricocheted off stones, grazing a child's neck.

This act inflamed public anger, dozens of young and strong men swarmed over, pounding the terrified guards with wild blows, smashing their heads in.

"I can't let them continue this mayhem."

The hacker shook his head and placed his finger on his temple, gently activating the chip in his brain.

"Boss Yang once said, as long as we don't kill more than 100 people at once, he can handle all the public opinion and investigations."

"Hmm..."

He looked at the workers leading the charge at the front, sneered, "Let's start by killing ten to get the feel for it."

The hacker planned to release malware to directly blow up the heads of those few workers.

In today's world, neural chips had become exceedingly commonplace, especially among miners doing heavy labor, each had one.

These could alleviate fatigue, monitor the miners' health, but simultaneously, they could become the hacker's murder weapon.

A small piece of code could make them spontaneously combust, then explode, blowing a fragile human brain into mush.

The old hacker believed this would certainly intimidate those worker civilians. Because the scene of a head exploding was quite spectacular, with red and white mixed together, bursting like firecrackers.

In the past, he had frequently used this trick to help Yang Lie slaughter those protesters who refused to back down... This thing was surprisingly effective; almost everyone who witnessed the "firecrackers" bloom would tremble and kneel.

And of course, this time should be no exception...

The hacker closed his eyes silently, the programs he needed were already built in his brain, needing only one command to complete the task.

The smart chip in his head had even pre-rendered the scene of the workers' tragic deaths for him.

"Buzz~"

The chip activated, the sound of silicon vibration mingling with electric currents surfaced.

However, in the next moment, the massacre scene he imagined didn't appear, but instead, his own vision blacked out, and his brain was immediately disabled!

Then...

BAM—!

A head exploded like a balloon.

Blood splattered, brain splatters fired.

The "firecracker" appeared on time, but its host was not those workers, but the lofty hacker!

His eyeball was thrown onto the screen, full of astonishment and confusion, to his death, he didn't understand what exactly had attacked him.

In fact, what attacked him was the same virus he intended to use on civilians, only the one who struck first... gave him no chance to react at all.

"Done, Boss Sis."

Meanwhile, in an unnoticed corner of the building, a black-haired, emotionless young boy was satisfactorily looking at his tablet.

It was Frost Moon.

The hacker of Tiger Mechanical Heavy Industries was quite decent, indeed an old hand among the broad hacker community.

But he couldn't compare to Frost Moon, a modified youngster.

The "Doll" modification typically employed the most advanced instruments, fully covering the fragile human body within the brain.

Even the initial modification Frost Moon underwent was enough to crush an ordinary hacker like this.

Moreover, this guy was lounging and slacking, using less than half his computing power.

In this situation, Frost Moon broke through his firewall as easily as opening his front door, with no difficulty at all.

"I've already breached the network defenses of Tiger Mechanical Heavy Industries, and all connected devices like surveillance, lighting systems, network ports, and entrances/exits are under my control."

"Do you need assistance in disabling surveillance probes or cutting off communication signals in this area, Boss Sis?"

"..."

The girl on the other end of the headset paused, then replied softly, "No need."

"Perhaps more than just this hacker is monitoring the surveillance. Don't rashly cut off the surveillance, or it might alert them."

"Keep the surveillance running normally, but any footage involving 'me' can be masked with some fake AI-generated images."

"You can do that, can't you?"

Frost Moon nodded.

"Mmm, then I'll cover you up first."

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